A Green Oasis At Craigmillar Library

Craigmillar Library is a wonderful community space open to all, but a lesser-known gem hiding at the back of the building is its beautiful little outdoor space. If you haven’t been to see it, it’s really worth a look!

For a while, this outdoor space couldn’t be used by the public as it had fallen into disrepair. Over the summer, Community Alliance Trust, funded and supported by the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, has been working with volunteers to restore the space, and to transform it into a sensory garden.

This type of garden has lots of things that will appeal to all our senses, like brightly-coloured plants, interesting things to touch, food to taste, lovely sounds to listen to like birds chirping and leaves swishing in the wind, and nice smells from herbs and flowers.

When we started the gardening sessions at the beginning of the summer, the whole place was already a sensory delight. The grassy spaces were an explosion of wildflowers and grasses, with bright purple vetches, crane’s bills and knapweeds, yellow cowslips and catsears, oxeye daisies, yarrow and wild carrot - all their different textures and colours shining in the sunny weather we’ve had. We even found some wild fennel growing! As the garden had been left to go wild, it had become a haven for biodiversity and pollinators, with moth species like the 5-spot burnet, hoverflies, loads of bees, and lots of butterflies. This meant we had a great place to start working from.

A few years ago, some wooden planters were built, with a tree planted in the middle of each one. The trees are now all grown up, but over time, the planters had rotted, meaning the garden sadly wasn’t safe for people to use. Luckily, over the last few weeks, volunteers have worked to make the space usable again. Thanks to them, and a group of young people from Youthbuild, the wood from the old planters has been removed and borders of soil and woodchip have been built up around the trees, keeping them safe and healthy. 

The council have also been helping to restore the garden, coming in and doing a bit of strimming for us. While long grass and wildflowers are excellent for wildlife, it’s important that we are able to share the space with little humans (and big humans!) who want to take their love of reading outdoors in the sunshine.

Now people can use the garden space while we crack on with building a trellis and raised beds and planting more beautiful plants - like these wild strawberries (below), very kindly donated by Midlothian Wildflowers and Cyrenians. 

It’s really important to have such places available to people, as getting outside, interacting with your senses and noticing what’s around can be really calming, sociable, grounding and relaxing. By looking after the trees and wildflowers, and adding some more plants in, we are also ensuring that the wildlife has an inviting and safe space to live alongside us.

Volunteer sessions are every Wednesday and Friday from 10:30 to 1:30 in the Craigmillar Library Sensory Garden until the end of September. Everyone is welcome - even if you just want to come along and watch!

Written by our Community Gardener, Kat Keogan